Framing the Western Cape water crisis : an analysis of thereporting of five South African publicationsin 2017 and 2018

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The Western Cape water crisis has been called the worst drought in over one hundred years, withmainstream media coverage being widespread. The media has long-lasting effects on the way inwhich society understands different events. Framing consists of selecting certain aspects of realityand making them more salient in communicating text; this in turn promotes a particular problem andtherefore specific reaction by those who come into contact with the information in question. Byunderstanding how the drought was framed by a selection of South African publications, researcherscan identify and critically examine the dominant media messages being communicated to the public,which in turn has the power to influence behaviours and attitudes towards water conservation.Although academic research in the area of framing is extensive, it lacks exploration from within theSouth African context. This study explores how a selection of five South African publications –namely the Cape Argus, Die Burger, the Cape Times, GroundUp and News24 – framed the WesternCape water crisis. The hypothesis of this study is that the publications favoured a political narrativeabove a scientific one in their coverage of the drought. Both quantitative and qualitative researchmethodologies in the form of content analyses were employed in order to illustrate the saliency of thedrought on the media agenda, as well as which messages readers were being exposed to with regardsto the water crisis. The main findings of this study were that a scientific narrative was largely lackingfrom media coverage of the drought.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University